On The Long Road To Marriage Equality

Anne Stanback of Avon was the founder and executive director of Love Makes a Family.

Anne Stanback of Avon was the founder and executive director of Love Makes a Family.

(Hartford Courant)

ANNE STANBACK

Connecticut in center of same-sex couples' right-to-marry fight

Those of us closely following the U.S. Supreme Court's verdict on allowing same-sex couples to marry will always remember exactly where we were June 26 when the decision came out. We were sitting in front of phones, tablets or computers at 10 a.m., eyes glued to the live feed of the SCOTUS blog.

SCOTUS (shorthand for Supreme Court of the United States) tells us what days it will release decisions, but not which decisions will be released. So that Friday we anxiously watched our screens.

Within a minute, a single word appeared: Marriage. Our decision day had finally arrived, but we didn't know the outcome. Then, a second later, another post: Kennedy has the opinion. Justice Anthony Kennedy has written all of the court's major gay rights opinions and was expected to be supportive.

We knew we had won.

And at that moment, a 15-year chapter of my life ended and Connecticut's role in bringing marriage equality to same-sex couples was sealed in history.

I helped to found and then led Love Makes a Family, Connecticut's marriage equality organization, for nearly a decade, until a 2008 state Supreme Court ruling made Connecticut the second state to allow same-sex couples to marry.

It's hard to remember now — in the glow of this historic win — but the movement for the freedom to marry had some very dark days not that long ago.

The first joyous Massachusetts marriages of 2004, which gave hope and inspiration to those of us fighting for equality in other states, were followed by devastating losses. Seven months later, voters in 11 states approved so-called Defense of Marriage Acts.

We were disheartened after that Election Day, but we expected those heartbreaking losses to be followed with successful lawsuits in state courts challenging laws that prohibited same-sex couples from marrying. Over the next two years, however, we lost every case.

For five years, Massachusetts was the only state where same-sex couples could legally marry. Massachusetts was getting lonely, and the movement was getting nervous. Meanwhile, eight same-sex couples in Connecticut, who had been denied marriage license applications in Madison, filed suit. That case reached the Connecticut Supreme Court, which issued a verdict in favor of the plaintiffs in October 2008. There was an audible sigh of relief alongside the cheering.

Less than a month later, however, the voters of California passed Proposition 8, overturning their recently passed law allowing same-sex couples to marry. Connecticut's win became more important still as it helped create a bulwark against the tide of opposition.

Sandwiched as we are between Massachusetts, the first state to win marriage, and New York, the first big state to win marriage, our little state has often gotten lumped in with "the others." But we did something significant here in Connecticut. We took what was to some a one-state anomaly and turned it into a pattern. Our "second state" status kept the marriage momentum going.

It was particularly welcome after enduring the successful anti-gay referendums of 2004, the Prop 8 loss in California and the disappointment at having to listen to elected officials in my state argue that my 20-year relationship might be entitled to all the rights of marriage in a civil union — but not the word marriage. Those were low points, to be sure. But even at those times, I never for a moment doubted that we would secure the freedom to marry.

Why was I so confident?

Primarily because I had seen people change right before my eyes. It was clear to all of us, whether we were speaking to crowds of hundreds or having private one-on-one discussions, that the more we engaged people in the marriage conversation, the more people began to understand that when gay people share in the freedom to marry, families are helped and no one is hurt. It took time to get to majority support, but from the beginning, public opinion moved in only one direction.

Connecticut's marriage equality campaign — like the national campaign that has just reached its conclusion — was a grass-roots movement in the best sense of the word, allowing us to be part of something larger than ourselves.

My work on this issue has enriched my life in more ways than I can count, mostly because of the people I have met and been fortunate to work alongside. After we won the Connecticut court case in 2008, I joined the boards of Freedom to Marry and GLAD as a way to support their work and continue to stay involved in the marriage fight and take on other equality issues.

In the majority of states, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people can still lose their jobs or their housing or be denied service in public places such as restaurants because of who we are. In Connecticut, we have done an excellent job of achieving "legal equality," but "lived equality" remains an unrealized goal, particularly for transgender people and youth.

The Supreme Court's marriage decision has made our union, as President Barack Obama said, "a little more perfect," but more work remains.

Anne Stanback of Avon was the founder and executive director of Love Makes a Family. She is on the boards of Freedom to Marry and GLAD and is the director of strategic partnerships for the national lesbian gay, bisexual and transgender organization Equality Federation.